"Defy the principles of heaven and earth..."
Li Fan murmured slowly, speaking only half the sentence aloud while finishing it silently in his mind.
To attain eternal life!
Since entering the cultivation world, Li Fan had witnessed Spirit Transformation cultivators uprooting mountains in battle and seen Crimson Flame at the Dao Unity level scorch the seas.
Yet none of those compared to the shock of glimpsing just a fraction of an Eternal Heavenly Venerable's power through these reality-defying signs.
This formless, imperceptible power that influenced and altered every cultivator in the world was far more terrifying than simple destruction.
I can remain unaffected only because the memory of Crimson Flame scorching the seas belongs to a catastrophe that has yet to occur. He realized.
That's why I can perceive the influence this Eternal Heavenly Venerable has imposed upon the world by comparing the past and present.
It took Li Fan considerable time to dispel the dread that came with suddenly discovering he'd been living constantly in the shadow of a titanic entity.
In this cultivation world, Golden Core cultivators were generally honored as Reverends, Nascent Soul cultivators as Eminences, Spirit Transformation cultivators as Immortal Eminences, and Dao Unity cultivators as Immortal Venerables. The ultimate, supreme powerhouses were called Eternal Heavenly Venerables.
Most Eternal Heavenly Venerables were like dragons—seen only in glimpses, never in full. Even their exact numbers and individual names remained unknown to ordinary cultivators.
Under this Eternal Heavenly Venerable's influence, all cultivators in the world gradually forget past catastrophes. Or rather, it seems any collective memory that brings pain falls under the dominion of Their power. Li Fan analyzed.
As if this cultivation world were truly a carefree paradise...
As he pondered, another realization dawned.
This world held immense malice toward cultivators, and its conflicts with Heavenly Venerables were particularly sharp.
Yet the cultivators he'd encountered—Kou Hong, Dao Xuanzi, He Zhenghao, Yuwen Xing, and others—were almost never the type burdened by deep hatred, constantly seeking to defy the heavens.
Consciously or not, all of them overlooked the world's malice. At most, they lamented the difficulties of immortal cultivation, and some even went about their days cheerfully...
This was undoubtedly the work of that Eternal Heavenly Venerable.
Was it to help all cultivators practice better? Or did it serve some other purpose?
Li Fan never shied from assuming the worst in others.
Eternal life was Li Fan's ultimate goal throughout his numerous lifetimes. But for now, that goal remained distant. Keeping his feet on the ground and cultivating step by step was what he needed to do at present.
Shaking off the awe inspired by the Eternal Heavenly Venerable, Li Fan began searching for information about the ancient Embodiment Transformation Dao Sect.
It wasn't classified, and he found relevant details easily.
The Embodiment Transformation Dao Sect wasn't a sect specializing in mechanical construct techniques. Instead, its disciples practiced a unique technique: the Embodiment Transformation Technique. This allowed them to anchor their mind, soul and consciousness into external objects.
After anchoring, they could not only manipulate these objects but also fully synchronize their sensations with the anchored item. At the highest levels of mastery, they could even abandon their physical bodies and become the anchored object.
The reason this information was so readily available wasn't because the Embodiment Transformation Technique was particularly powerful.
Rather, there were quite a few "exquisite writings" that described male and female cultivators using the Embodiment Transformation Dao to inhabit all sorts of bizarre objects and engage in acts of yin-yang union. The sheer variety of methods made even Li Fan click his tongue in amazement.
After browsing for a while, Li Fan shook his head and closed the screen.
So it appears that Tian Yang buried his puppet within the undersea earthfire veins. Then, he placed his soul's consciousness into the puppet itself before his death.
Thousands of years passed. The puppet absorbed earthfire day and night, growing without cease. And Tian Yang grew from a cultivator once stalled at the Golden Core realm into a powerful existence capable of battling a Spirit Transformation Eminence.
Although, it seems he has now lost his higher consciousness. He can only act on instinct.
But I doubt he holds any regrets.
“Tian Yang is not weaker than others.”
He lived up to those words, more or less.
After this moment of reflection, Li Fan began his closed-door cultivation.
Observing the Spirit Transformation battle had granted him insights. He felt he wasn’t far from the next bottleneck.
And just as he predicted, five days later, Li Fan felt the spiritual qi within his body reach saturation. It happened as naturally as water finding its course.
He had cultivated both the Thousand Mechanisms Jade Cosmos Scripture and the Heaven-Swapping Art simultaneously to the peak of the late-stage Qi Refinement realm. He could advance no further.
Fortunately, to Li Fan's delight, the moment he reached this bottleneck, he faintly sensed where his breakthrough opportunity lay.
Furthermore, the path to this opportunity was destined to be one of peril narrowly avoided and misfortune transformed into fortune.
After making some brief preparations, Li Fan prepared to set out immediately.
But before he could depart, a profound and mysterious insight suddenly flooded his mind.
His avatar Lin Fan, who had been in deep contemplation for so long, was finally emerging from seclusion.
It was truly a case of double happiness; one thing goes smoothly, and everything else follows.
Li Fan couldn't help but feel that the tides of fortune had turned, and the world was now lending him its strength.
Settling his emotions, Li Fan carefully contemplated the divine ability his avatar had gained from this period of contemplation.
All things in the world are interconnected, link by link, from life to death.
The technique Li Fan comprehended, Interlocking Chains of Life and Death, could be considered an enhanced, upgraded version of Formless Killing Mechanism.
By designating a specific person as the "death" target, one could trace the chain of connections backwards to find the most fragile and fatal “life” link.
Severing this single link could, without anyone's knowledge, push the designated target toward death.
Formless Killing Mechanism required locking onto a target that was present. Furthermore, the target's strength could not exceed Li Fan's by too much, otherwise Li Fan would suffer backlash. It also carried the risk of the target detecting the lock on them.
Interlocking Chains of Life and Death was different; the caster only needed to know that the target existed. It could almost completely ignore the difference in cultivation realms between the caster and target. With sufficient information, even a Qi Refinement cultivator could slay a Nascent Soul entity.
Take Tian Yang’s cave dwelling for example. If Li Fan wanted to kill a Nascent Soul Eminence, he wouldn't need to act personally. He could simply activate the Interlocking Chains of Life and Death to follow the chain of causality in reverse, tracing all possible links that encompassed both the Eminence and Tian Yang’s cave dwelling. From these, he would find the most suitable link.
Then, he would covertly influence that Nascent Soul Eminence, fostering the idea to explore Tian Yang’s cave dwelling within him. That Nascent Soul Eminence would then meet his end within that cave dwelling.
Though powerful, activating the Interlocking Chains of Life and Death required a specific condition. One had to first determine the "death" link. That was to say, one had to determine how the target died before the reverse tracing could begin. And this method of death also had to be genuinely plausible.
For instance, Li Fan could envision a scenario where the Nascent Soul Eminence accidentally suffered a disruption in his spiritual qi during flight, lost control, plummeted from the sky, and died upon impact.
This outcome was indeed possible. However, the complexity of the reverse deduction required to engineer such a result far exceeded what Li Fan was currently capable of undertaking. Thus, the Interlocking Chains of Life and Death could not be activated.